Plot: Left-wing politicians are charged with running private-sector companies (from department stores to lemonade stands) while the audience votes online about exactly what time during the hour it will go out of business.

President Obama gave me that idea during his business lecture yesterday:

Appearing at a meeting of the Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C., the president also urged Congress to move forward on tax reform, immigration, and infrastructure spending, and expressed confidence that Washington could avoid yet another damaging standoff over funding the federal government.

But it was his comments on wages—which, though mild, offered a clear challenge to his audience of corporate leaders—that appeared to represent his main message.

“Although corporate profits are at their highest levels in 60 years, and the stock market is up, wages and income still haven’t gone up significantly and haven’t picked up the way they did in earlier generations,” Obama said. “That’s part of what’s causing disquiet in the general public, even though the aggregate numbers look good.”
Obama added that the shrinking of wages and income as a share of overall GDP had caused an “undertow” of pessimism, despite the improving economy, and said giving workers a raise would benefit corporations, too.

“When wages are good, and consumers feel like they’ve got money in their pockets, that ends up being good for business not bad for business,” he said.

It’s always hilarious when asking business owners to give workers across-the-board raises is considered common sense but asking government to cut taxes and regs is an unthinkably preposterous notion.

As far as I know none of the people from the business community present asked Obama (since he was so concerned with worker wages) why he recently waved a pen and put another few million people in the potential employee pool. Maybe Obama’s next executive order will be to suspend the law of supply and demand.